I went to take my turns while on Vacation and had a few Invites at the top of my list, so I  thought I would clear those out first (decline the Review and then join the Tournaments), well I got the STUPID message that I can't join games while on Vacation, so without really thinking it all through I went and ended my vacation (which is what the message tells me to do) so that I could join, but of course immediately everything that was over 2 days was an Auto-Skip and one of the Tournament Invites was an Auto-Boot.

Unable to join games while on Vacation is still a bad restriction IMO, at least especially for games in which I was Invited.

And the main reason for this being in Support, is that I don't think I could have Joined the Tournament game (http://www.wargear.net/games/view/16562) without ending my Vacation which means I would have been Booted before I could Join, so that type of scenario needs fixed somehow.

Along with this complaint/issue, I did notice that the Boot did not update the Rankings in the GearWars Tournament http://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/11 . The Leaderboard still shows I only have 6 games played, but if you click on View for my games it shows all 7 games, Hugh is the same way, shows 3 on the Leaderboard but 4 on the games list, it's not counting the Boot game.
(Of course I would like to have the ability to play this game rather than it stay as a Boot :))

So besides all that, hope you are having a good vacation. =]

IRoll11s wrote: So besides all that, hope you are having a good vacation. =]

Orphan conference was great; good info and excellent speakers!  I have a feeling the going "Agile" boot camp next week isn't going to be as great .

I would just like to point out that there would not have been a problem with getting booted if you had taken your turns before coming off of vacation.  I just noticed that you had strategically neglected to mention that idea.

A "coming off vacation grace period" might be a good idea.  I'd say something like 3-hours after you cancel a vacation you're still "safe" from getting skipped/booted.

Toaster wrote:

I would just like to point out that there would not have been a problem with getting booted if you had taken your turns before coming off of vacation.  I just noticed that you had strategically neglected to mention that idea.

 

A "coming off vacation grace period" might be a good idea.  I'd say something like 3-hours after you cancel a vacation you're still "safe" from getting skipped/booted.

I do agree I should have thought it through more (which I mentioned originally), so I don't necessarily think a "grace period" is needed.  The problem was that I had to come off of Vacation to take my turn (accept an Invite).  And I don't think it was possible to take my turn (accept the Invite) for the GearWars game and thus not possible to not be booted, that is wrong.

The games where I was Auto-Skipped annoyed me, but I accept that it was my fault (even if due to the no-joining while on Vacation rule that I obviously don't agree with or see the need for :P) and since I had let my games list dwindle down since I knew I was going on Vacation, I got skipped in only 4 other games (which hopefully won't affect the outcome, and/or it's Dev games so I'm not too concerned anyhow).

I think maybe this could be avoided by not requiring you to join tournament games.   I mean you signed up for the tournaments in the first place, so why do you have to join each game?    There would be the issue of your turn timer starting if you had the first turn.   Maybe a combination of autojoining tournament games combined with not starting the timer on a tourny game until you actually log in might work.

IRoll11s wrote:

I think maybe this could be avoided by not requiring you to join tournament games.   I mean you signed up for the tournaments in the first place, so why do you have to join each game?

I was thinking about that too, oh ya, the problem was how do you choose your player color.

*edit*  :P The "oh ya" was me forgetting/remembering why I thought it wouldn't work as well as I had originally thought :P

Oh ya.

Hmm, well.

Hmm.

What if you choose player color preference when you initially join the tournament?
Sort of like simultaneous territory selection, but with player colors.

Toaster wrote: What if you choose player color preference when you initially join the tournament?
Sort of like simultaneous territory selection, but with player colors.

Won't really work I don't think... there's generally a lot more tournament players than colors defined on the board so there would be clashes. I think the only way to do it practically is to randomly assign colors automatically. Would this be preferable to having to join manually?

I'll take off the restriction that you can't join games to which you've been invited (i.e. private and tournament games) while on vacation. So it will only apply to public ranked games in the join queue.

What?! I wouldn't get to pick my tournament colors?  How will I deal with it?

Actually, If you've got auto-color selection, why not also auto-join in tournaments (at least as an option, or when not on vacation or something like that).

I thought Toaster's idea was that we set up color preference. The code would just have to check for a clash, and if there was one assign the lower-ranked player (probably a bad idea, but sounded fun) a random color.

People wouldn't always get their choice, but it would avoid having to join tournament games which I think would speed things up considerably.

Color preference, with my preference always overriding anyone else who thinks they get to be pink.

Although it causes another issue since most boards have defined colors which wouldn't always match up with what people have set up. I generally think pre-defined color preferences probably won't work, but are an intriguing idea nonetheless.

I think the color preference would be set up for each tournament, and since each tournament only has one board in it that wouldn't be an issue.

tom wrote:

I'll take off the restriction that you can't join games to which you've been invited (i.e. private and tournament games) while on vacation. So it will only apply to public ranked games in the join queue.

Thanks!

As for Random colors, I'm not a fan of that, but I think bengals suggestion could work.  Choose your color at Tournament Join and at clashes the player with the highest Rank gets it and the others get Random.  Still kind of a bummer but so far the best way I've seen/can think of to not have to Join tournament games.

Why is that even a factor? Tom already fixed it where you can join while on vacation, so who cares?

I'd much rather choose my 2nd favorite color if Navy (or Navy equivalent) is taken in a given game than get random, and I'd MUCH rather Tom spend his time coding something that's actually useful than futzing around with this automatic tourney color selection nonsense.

The only advantage to doing the auto-join is it would speed up each tournament game by a day or so, which adds up over a tournament. But, I agree it's not all that important.

bengaltiger wrote: The only advantage to doing the auto-join is it would speed up each tournament game by a day or so, which adds up over a tournament. But, I agree it's not all that important.

+1